Baked Ikea Meatballs?

We finally got some Ikea Meatballs a few weeks ago. It was out of stock last January and the restaurant didn't have it either. Sweetie dropped by before the end of February and managed to buy a pack of meatballs, gravy and lingon berry.

One pack is good for two servings for us. We used to brown it in olive oil first and then cook it fully in water. Miggy surprised me when he said the pack said to bake it. Bake Ikea meatballs? 

We tried it since baking is healthier than frying and it was actually easier. The meatballs cooked evenly and we enjoyed it with gravy and some lingon berry on the side. We still have half a pack and will cook it in a few weeks. It's in the freezer for now. 

Here's how to bake it :)

#BeKind #StaySafe

Jaybucks' Sunflower

I thought today I'd showcase Sweetie's successful gardening project -- his sunflowers have started to bloom! Woohoo!

Nine weeks ago we re-started our balcony garden. I haven't been successful at planting flowers, so I focused on veggies. Sweetie though has been trying to grow flowers since last year. We don't know if the seeds we got were not good or it's the soil, but the only flowers that so far bloomed in our "balcony farm" are tomato flowers haha. 

Sweetie got a packet of sunflower seeds from the supermarket. He planted it nine weeks ago. Three out of the five that sprouted survived getting transplanted. They're all blooming now! Woohoo! It's been really exciting to watch the sunflower grow taller and form the base of the flower. In the past few days yellow petals have started to bloom. We hope to see it in full bloom by end of the week! 

Updates about our other plants are on our gardening blog :)

Meanwhile while Sweetie's been busy with the plants, I finally had some energy today to bake peanut butter cookies. I used Toastbox peanut butter again (recipe here). I can't wait to bake it with Lily's peanut butter again. Will be giving some to our neighbors. Hope they'll like it!

Day 24 Gratitude Challenge, A book, magazine or podcast. I've been listening to some podcasts now that I have time. I haven't listened to a lot, but have so far enjoyed "Superhuman", the podcast of Wil Dasovich. He went through a lot when he had cancer and was able to overcome it. I'm fascinated with his energy and I'm grateful for the example he shows on how to live a healthier life. I'm hoping that I'll be able to bike again in time. 

CB///*Yr2/107 #StuckAtHomeDay/Yr2/130 #NewG339 #Home97 #StayHome #BeKind 

Baked Spanish Bread for the First Time

Ahh after baking dinner rolls and ensaymada I felt I had enough experience to try baking one of my all-time favorite Filipino buns - Spanish Bread! I honestly have no idea how Spanish Bread came about, but I've been eating it since I was a child. It's one of the most common buns you can buy in any corner bakery in the Philippines. It is best eaten warm.

The last time I had authentic Spanish Bread was in January when I was still in Manila. It is very expensive to buy in Lucky Plaza -- can go up to SG$2! That's about 80 pesos! I decided to bake Spanish Bread during the long weekend two weeks ago.

I think I made the right decision of baking Spanish Bread after baking ensaymada. It was quite challenging for me since it was my first time baking with bread flour and margarine. Getting the margarine to combine properly with the other ingredients was challenging. To prepare for this challenge I watched a good number of videos to understand what I had to do.

Here's how my first attempt at baking Spanish Bread went -

One of the most challenging aspects of baking buns is sizing them equally. I didn't have a kitchen scale, dough slicer and rolling pin when I made this so the buns came out in odd sizes hehe. I also learned from previous baking adventures that I had to reduce the oven temperature because I now have a fan oven. It behaves very differently from the convection oven in our previous apartment.

I halved the recipe as usual. I hope when I'm a bit more confident about my baking I'll be able to send some to my friends and when I get home to make some for my Mom. Yay!

My next baking adventure will be Pandesal!!!

#CB/62 #StuckAtHomeDay92 #StayHome #BeKind

Tried Baking Ensaymada, Challenging Siya!

So I've started to tick off the list of Pinoy breads I'd like to learn how to bake. I read that pandesal is tough to bake so I thought I'd try something else first. I decided on ensaymada because I love this sweet, cheesy bread. I chose the "panaderia" version and not the soft, fluffy one that commercial bakeries make.

Ensaymada is my second attempt at baking bread. My first attempt was dinner rolls. I'm glad I started with dinner rolls because I figured it would be easy and fool-proof. Baking ensaymada was quite challenging. I only started getting the set-up right on the second pan. The sizes of the bread came out all different since I don't have a kitchen scale yet. I'll probably buy more baking stuff when I feel like I'm going to do this every week (maybe after I bake one more bread).

It took me most of the day to bake the ensaymada. I always finish just before dinner haha. We gobbled up a few and left the rest for breakfast the next day. Here's a vlog on my first attempt at baking ensaymada -

Next on my list is Spanish bread!


#CB55  #StuckAtHomeDay86 #StayHome #BeKind #SentiSabado

The Home Panaderia is Open! My First Attempt at Baking Bread

Two decades... That's how long it's taken for me to learn how to be comfortable at cooking. The only thing I new how to cook until ten years ago was spaghetti and lasagna and I only knew how to bake peanut butter cookies and crinkles. 

I was forced to learn to cook for survival. I got a lot of encouragement from my Ate who's a good cook. She told me that her initial attempts at cooking didn't always work. I still cannot figure out how she turned sweet and sour pork green. She said my brother-in-law still ate it and I thought if she could do it I could learn too. 

I tried cooking and baking like a science experiment. I rarely veer away from the recipe. It's my Dad and siblings who have that talent at winging it while cooking. Miggy actually has the talent for it. My attempt at teaching him through "Recipes for my Son" is just a way for me to encourage him to cook more.

I wanted to try baking bread as early as late March, but yeast was hard to come by. I only found some through Lazada and it took weeks to arrive. I was already researching for easy bread recipes I could try. I heard that our Pinoy breads are a little hard to make, so I decided to make dinner rolls for my first attempt. 

My cousin who runs a bakery in Naga City said she doesn't have the patience for baking bread. She prefers to bake cake. I told her I like baking bread because it gives me opportunity to rest in-between the proofing period. I followed the recipe I chose step by step and save for the uneven sizes of the dough it turned out well. I kinda regretted baking only half the recipe since we finished everything immediately haha. 

My new mantra now is, "Just keep baking to learn more!" My plan is to attempt ensaymada next!

#CB48   #StuckAtHomeDay79 #StayHome #BeKind 

My Home Panaderia

We had an extra day off today. Yay! I woke up around 11 in the morning and just stared out of the window while drinking my coffee. I woke up rested and happy, I was content to just spend time doing nothing. After checking on my plants I decided to watch some bread baking videos. I've always wanted to learn how to bake bread. 

I took a trial baking class last year.
Plans have changed, I'm now a full time YouTube Academy student haha.

My biggest fear about bread baking is dealing with yeast. Luckily there's now a lot of videos on YouTube you can watch to learn how to bake. I've been watching a gazillion bread baking videos to learn how to bake bread. I'd probably start with something easy like dinner rolls and then work my way through different types of Pinoy bread. 

Dreaming of Panbonete. I hope my cousin gives me the recipe! :)

My original plan this year was to enroll in bread baking classes. I still want to, but in the meantime I've enrolled myself in YouTube Academy (haha). It took me awhile before I was able to obtain some yeast! Now that I have yeast I could start my bread baking career. 

I'm now compiling a list of bread I want to try baking. I hope to bake one type of bread every week. The perfect time is this weekend since Singapore is on holiday on Monday! Yay!

Here's my bread baking bucket list:

Dinner rolls

Ensaymada

Spanish bread

Pandesal

Pianono

Putok

Pinagong

Pan de regla/kalihim

Cheese rolls

Monay

Markina 

Panbonete

Wow, this is quite a long list! But I'm up for the challenge! What about you? What are your favorite Filipino bread? 

#CB46   #StuckAtHomeDay77 #StayHome #BeKind 

#ThankYouUncleSundar

Yummy Toastbox Peanut Butter Cookies

On Labor Day I finally tried out the oven in the kitchen of our new apartment. Here's how you can make it -

Full recipe here.

#CB44  #WFH38 #StuckAtHomeDay75 #StayHome #BeKind

Recipes for my Son: Double Stuffed Baked Potatoes

I love baking food coz it's easy and usually yummy. Here's a recipe my boys absolutely love and ingredients are quite easy to find too. There are times it's hard to find sour cream so I've tried making my own with just cream and calamansi. Baking potatoes though take awhile and to shorten the baking time I just boil the potatoes. 

Here's how I've been making double stuffed baked potatoes -

Ingredients:

4 large potatoes

2 T butter

1 medium white onion, chopped finely

1 cup grated cheddar cheese

1/4 cup sour cream 

salt and pepper to taste

#CB35 #WFH31 #StayHome #BeKind

Cheesecake Day

Last Saturday I attended a cheesecake baking class at The Maya Kitchen. I was really nervous because the last time I attended a cooking class was in high school. I wasn't really fond of the kitchen, much less getting pressured to cook with others. I learned how to cook out of necessity (cook or starve!) when I got married, but I have never cooked outside my kitchen.

Anyway, my fears were soon abated when I realized that we were not going to have a hands-on session. Our teachers, Nikka Cleofe-Alejar (Veronica's Kitchen owner and president of Filipina Home Bakers) and Wel Garcia-Dy (Toto's Bakeshop owner) said that they were not professional chefs, but Mom's who just love to bake. So I relaxed and listened to them intently.

Nikka taught us how to make no-bake mango cheesecake first. It looks easy to do and probably has the least cost among the four recipes that they taught. Here's how the mango cheesecake looked before we gobbled it up.

Then Wel taught us how to make Oreo cheesecake. I got a lot of tips from Wel since she explained some technical baking stuff in layman's terms. Aside from mixing techniques, she also gave us an overview about some baking tools and materials. You don't actually need to buy everything since you can actually make do with just a couple of stuff. You can also use local brands instead of Oreo. Here's the sumptuous Oreo cheesecake.

And then Nikka taught us how to make mini cheesecakes. I learned from this session that you should put out your ingredients, butter and cream cheese, at least an hour before you start baking so that it would be easy to mix them.

The final recipe was chocolate cheesecake and it was Wel who did the demo. I think among the four recipes this would be the most challenging for me to do since I've never baked using baking chocolate. In good time maybe.

Here's our class photo:

I'm definitely ear-marking some time this August to bake cheesecake!